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Vint Cerf Answering Questions on Top-Level Domains

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the things-you-have-been-dying-to-ask dept.

penciling_in writes "Over at CircleID, Vint Cerf is taking question from the community Slashdot-style with regards to top level domains. 'As most readers are no doubt aware, when it comes to the topic of Top-Level Domains (TLDs), Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) takes center stage. From the existing .com and .net TLDs to the newly introduced and future releases, in the past years we witnessed the increasing level of discussions around Top-Level Domains painted -- ever so often -- with political, legal and technical debates. Vint Cerf, Google's VP and Chief Internet Evangelist, who has served as chairman of the board of ICANN since the November of 1999 has accepted CircleID's invitation to directly respond to your questions on the topic. This is your opportunity to have your Top-Level Domain related questions responded by Vint Cerf.'"

10 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. my first question would have to be... by vena · · Score: 4, Interesting

    is there a real use for having TLDs anymore? no one follows the current rules to any reasonable extent, and it just seems more an artificial way of creating a market sphere, such as how a .com appears more legitimate than a .net for a business regardless of its position in network services. as of now, they provide no discernable organisational structure to speak of imho...

    1. Re:my first question would have to be... by jon787 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Which is why one of the political parties has gop.gov

      --
      X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
  2. Wiki! by Aquatopia17 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How about a .wiki TLD? It's just crazy enough to work, considering the countless wikis to be found out there. Wiki Wiki Wiki!

    --
    Don't sweat the petty things. Don't pet the sweaty things. --Stephen J. Simmons
  3. Pretend I am Jon Postel... by RedLeg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Pretend that I am Jon Postel, still alive, and I have cornered you an the hallway at IETF.

    Defend to me, on grounds that you know I (Jon Postel) would accept, the decision to kill the .XXX domain.

    Remember (and I am not reminding you, sir) that registration in that domain is not mandatory for ANYONE.

    Yes, we've met (at IETF), and no, I will not tell you who I am.

    --Red

  4. Re:Like... by fr1kk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As a student who is rather naive to the process of managing domains, what kind of process is involved when it comes to deciding a new top level domain? Also, aside from the given national domains, what is the life cycle of a potential domain that could possibly come to existance, and how do external groups affect the decision (i hate to be cliche, but for example: .xxx domains and the pressure from right wing groups to prevent the domain from allowing a general 'acceptance' of the genre .xxx assumes)? -Blaine

    --
    sig: Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not
  5. Kind of not totally on topic, but must be asked... by AtariDatacenter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why did you leave MCI just before its acquisition by Verizon was completed? What do you see the future holding for Verizon?

  6. .biz, .info, .museum, .aero - phase out? by Animats · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Is it time to phase out some TLDs as unsuccessful?
    • .BIZ The Internet's equivalent of a strip mall in a bad neighborhood. No major company has its primary domain in .biz. Its reputation is that bad. It's used mostly by spammers, scammers, and other low-lifes.
    • .INFO There's some use of .info, but not much. Is it worth the trouble?
    • .MUSEUM The number of museums in this TLD is so tiny there's a single page that lists all of them. Yet most of the big names in museums aren't there.
    • .AERO Supposedly for the aviation industry, it's almost totally unused. The registrar has put up redirect pages for the major airport codes, such as LAX, but many of those are broken or redirect to the wrong page.

    When considering any new TLDs, it's worth looking at how these TLDs, from ICANN's first wave of expansion, worked out.

  7. Control by flyingember · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Given that top level domains were initially created to give a sense of order to the internet, before user@schoolname was more the rule, it seem .com would ONLY be given to commercial groups, .net to networks, etc. I was reading RFC 1480 and it looks like even as late as 1993 a restructure of the US domain system could have been created along the lines of how foreign countries do it. bbc.co.uk would thus be a british site, and bbc.co.us could be bbc americas domain. Instead we have a hodgepodge of international mixes. Thus my question is, why all the chaos in how they were assigned?

  8. MCI by 1310nm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As a fellow at MCI (please correct me if I'm wrong), what was your day-to-day activity like? I grok things as far up the technological chain as network engineering, but I never had insight into the work of a visionary at MCI.

    BTW, it's great to be rid of the MCI name now that we're Verizon Business, and I wish you luck at Google.

  9. Forget Top Level Domains, Tell Us About 2nd Level by Schlemphfer · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I've noticed that anytime a domain expires, it doesn't go back into the unused pool and become available to someone else. Most or all of the expired domain names get instantly sucked up the moment they expire by companies nobody's ever heard of that (I suppose) have contracts with the top domain registrars. I suppose this amounts to thousands or tens of thousands of domain names vanishing from circulation each year; domains that I have to think are essentially ransomed off by these bulk buyers, one by one, to anyone who really, really wants it.

    I've got to think that, when purchased in bulk, it costs pennies, or perhaps tenths or even hundredths of pennies, in actual administrative costs to keep these domains registered each year.

    Since costs of maintaining registration for expired domains can approach nothing, are we at risk of these re-registration companies eventually having permanent ownership of nearly every domain a person might think to register? Might it not be in the public interest to have a minimum annual registration fee per domain (say, three dollars), to help ensure that domains aren't held in perpetuity by speculators?

    --
    I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?